


Healthy and Productive Anger Management: A Self-Help Guide by Regina Mills

by thebabytiger



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Crack, Drabbles, F/F, Gen, Spoof, Tongue-in-cheek
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-30
Updated: 2014-11-13
Packaged: 2018-02-11 02:44:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 11,920
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2050509
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thebabytiger/pseuds/thebabytiger
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Regina Mills is in therapy for her anger issues, and is following Dr. Hopper's advice to the letter. A collection of loosely-related drabbles.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Acknowledge Your Anger

**Author's Note:**

  * For [phoenix_cry](https://archiveofourown.org/users/phoenix_cry/gifts).

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Acknowledge the anger. Know what it looks and feels like. Accept that anger is human and that you are angry.

Regina Mills hadn’t been in therapy for very long. In fact, she had been in therapy for so short a time that she really didn’t like to refer to it as therapy; her current pseudonym for the activity was something more along the lines of a “Weekly Mayoral Audit of the Storybrooke Mental Health Service Industry”. It really could not be considered her fault that the only mental health services offered in her cursed little town were offered by Dr. Archie Hopper and therefore she was not also stopping by any other offices in town on a weekly basis in order to flesh out the findings of her ongoing investigation. As she liked to remind people whenever possible, she had only enacted the curse, but she hadn’t created it. She had been happy enough with the results, for a time, but the actual day-to-day details of the town had nothing to do with her in terms of creation. Of course, she had been the Mayor of the town for over 30 years, so perhaps at some point something should have changed, but considering those years had been spent trapped in a perpetual groundhog day loop, frozen in time, she felt she was quite excused from having needed to change anything.

Now, however, the town was changed. The curse was broken, everyone remembered everything, and it was all that Regina could do to keep the town and her family intact. Of course, none of those things would even be an issue if it weren’t for Ms. Swan, who seemed determined not only to bring about her downfall and the loss of everything she held dear, but also to stick around and watch the whole thing from a front-row seat. Which definitely explained why the blonde woman was standing only a foot away, scribbling goodness knows what on a notepad, tongue stuck out in concentration.

One of these days the younger woman would bite that thing clean off, Regina mused, and then instantly started wondering how to make that seem like an accident. Maybe if she just bumped her hard enough at the right second, and feigned a fainting spell? A frown crossed her brow – the idea was obviously going to need much more work, and currently she had better things to be doing. Like tapping her foot impatiently. Especially because as annoying as Emma could be, sometimes that tongue was actually useful…

“Well Sheriff, you’ve seen the damage for yourself, and you’ve taken my statement,” she began in a slow drawl the moment Emma looked up from her notepad, gesturing to the less than complimentary graffiti that now adorned an impressively sizeable space on the side of the Town Hall building. “Isn’t this the part where you go out and, I don’t know, arrest the person who did it?”

Emma just blinked at her for a moment. “Regina, look, I’m sorry to say that I really don’t see anything here that would lead us to any one person in particular. It’s not like you have security cameras set up all over the place. It’s probably just a prank.”

Regina’s lips thinned into a line of displeasure. “Just a prank?” she reiterated.

“Yes. You know there’s been a lot more harmless mischief in Storybrooke since we came back from Neverland.”

“I would hardly consider this harmless.”

“The building needs to be re-painted anyway, you were just saying that yourself last week, and the bushes are hardly even damaged. I doubt you’ll even have to replace a single plant.”

“And we both know full well exactly why we came back from Neverland to find this sudden, never before seen, rash of ‘harmless’ crime in this town and whose brilliant idea that was, don’t we Sheriff?”

Emma winced. “The Lost Boys are adjusting, just as we all are,” she tried, thankfully smart enough to not try and directly defend herself and Mary Margaret, who had thought it best to take the children back with them to Storybrooke once Pan had been defeated and the group had won Henry back. “They’ve had a hard time of things.”

“Yes, I would imagine living in the middle of a forest for centuries and acting like a wild group of pixies quite taxing, however I’m sure they’re not quite so dim as to not have noticed that they are no longer in Neverland and that Peter Pan is no longer their leader.”

“Yes, and now they have no leader at all.”

“They don’t need a leader. They have rules. I make the rules and I am distinctly certain that I did not design them so that they would apply to everyone in this town except for those cretins. You are the Sheriff, you enforce my rules, so go enforce them!” Regina ground out, feeling the tell-tale tingle in her palm that told her how close she was to fully losing her temper. Quickly, she tried to rein in her emotions before she set the already trampled bushes alight, but the amount of effort that it required was more than she had anticipated. Practically trembling with the amount of effort it took, she tried once more to address the blonde in front of her.

“Just go and do your job, Ms. Swan,” she instructed, managing not to point out that she wasn’t entirely certain the woman was even up to that much.

“I do know what I’m doing Regina,” Emma shot back, though it lacked the amount of fire that would have usually accompanied such a remark and Regina, to her horror, found that the green eyes before her were looking at her in an almost worried fashion. “Are you okay, Regina? You look a little strange”

Regina had bared her teeth in a wordless snarl before she could help herself. What was it Dr. Hopper had said in their last… audit? Acknowledge your anger. That was it. “Sherrif Swan,” she managed through gritted teeth, nails digging fiercely into her still itching palms, trying in vain to focus on anything that wouldn’t remind her of this whole incident and only managing to find, again and again, her gaze pinned on the pitiful remnants of what had once been superior landscaping. “I, and my office, have been the victim of a rather vulgar show of disrespect. I am only human.” That too, had been something Dr. Hopper had seemed to want to stress, thematically, throughout their entire discussion of his healthcare practices. She found it more than a little odd, given that she knew she wasn’t a dwarf, fairy, troll, werewolf, or any other manner of beast, and had never attempted to pretend she was one. Except for that Ursula incident, and really that was more like a brief roleplaying experience more than anything else delusional. “And I am angry.”

Emma held her hands out in what Regina assumed was meant to be slightly placating. “I understand you’re upset, but try to calm down. I will be looking into this, okay?”

“Yes, that’s what worries me, Sheriff,” Regina sighed, feeling more than a little bit unsettled by the fact that she was actually feeling slightly calmer after that paltry attempt at reassurance. That being said, she could still feel the rage simmering just under the surface, she couldn’t manage to get her eyes off of the graffiti or the bushes for any longer than 10 seconds, and her palm still itched. At the very least, the acknowledgement had cleared her mind enough that she was once more able to think with some semblance of a clear mind in order to work towards solving her current problems: ruined bushes, graffiti, and this persistent itch. Well, the only way to fix that was to just let it go. “Are you quite through with the crime scene now, Ms. Swan?”

“Yeah,” Emma answered, looking a little puzzled.

“Excellent. Then I find myself currently more in need of Mr. Thumb’s services than I do yours Sheriff. Go do… whatever it is you do,” she instructed flippantly.

“Mr. Thumb?”

“Yes, Tom. It appears we will be needing the whole property re-landscaped after all.”

The fireball, when it finally flared to life in Regina’s hand, gave off enough heat to have Emma leaping backwards ungracefully with a slight yelp, but in contrast to the blonde’s growing alarm Regina felt only calm as the heat soothed the itch on her palm into non-existence and made it so that she would no longer have to look at the trampled bushes ever again.

“Thank you for your time Sheriff,” she said blithely in obvious dismissal, extinguishing the fire with a wave of her hand and turning her back to the now smoking and charred remains as she walked briskly back towards the entrance to the building.


	2. Discern the Cause of your Anger

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Discern the cause of your anger. Sometimes anger at a person or event is indicative of anger at a larger cause.

Pain blooms against her cheek and Regina thinks that this might be one of the stupidest things that Leroy has ever done… and that’s saying something, considering her general opinion of his overall intelligence. However, taking a swing at a woman in a bar, and the Evil Queen at that, really does take the cake.

Regina has thrown him against the nearest wall, which wasn’t all that near to begin with, and frozen him there before either of them can really register what has happened. If it hadn’t been for the people that had been forced to scatter out of the way as the dwarf whizzed past them it could have been possible that no one would have noticed. But of course they did, as they always did, and she could see Emma’s frown from across the bar where she had been getting them drinks and Regina doesn’t at all relish the lecture that she knows is coming. She briefly considers the merits of a “habits are hard to break” argument with Emma before she discards it, as it also excuses the behavior of the hapless little man and that is definitely something that Regina does not want to happen. So she puts all thoughts of the impending discussion with the Sheriff aside and focuses her attention solely on making the most of her dwindling time to make her point to the dwarf.

The crowd parts for her as she stalks towards Leroy and the very deference of such a crowd, just like the days in the Enchanted Forest, brings a cruelly satisfied smirk to her lips as the fury and rage builds within her. Storybrooke is not the Enchanted Forest, that much is very obvious, but there are enough similarities to ensure that even when she is feeling about as far from home as it is possible to be, she can still find something to make her feel at home. In this moment, there are enough of both types of feelings to make her head swim.

Of course, the instant she is standing in front of him, her lip curled in derision as he looks up at her defiantly, she realizes that she really has no idea where to begin. “I believe a congratulations are in order. That is quite possibly the stupidest thing I have ever seen, dwarf.” The whole bar is impossibly quiet, so her voice carries. “At least under the curse you had a few brain cells to rub together… those that weren’t drowning in cheap beer, that is.” Leroy strains against the invisible bonds at the mention of the curse and there is a quiet murmur that Regina mostly doesn’t notice because Leroy is also shouting at her, fingers reaching towards her futiley. 

“You’re not the Queen here, sister!” he yells irately, “I’m not the only one whose life you’ve ruined and I’m not the only one who wants to see you pay for it!” And while he’s right, and the weight of that sinks impossibly heavy onto her shoulders, she can’t help but be wholly amused by the entire thing. Of course she’s ruined lives; she was the Evil Queen, and much of that was in the job description. As for paying for her sins, well, she couldn’t think of anything more humiliating than having a dwarf take a swing at her in what passed for a tavern in this world. If that wasn’t enough, the good Sheriff would see to it that things were made worse, somehow.

“What is going on here?” Emma demanded as she finally got close to the source of the disruption, the crowd having parted much more reluctantly for her than they had for the Mayor, or for Leroy for that matter. “Regina let him down.”

Regina largely ignores her. “No, dear, I am very much aware that here I am not a queen. If I were, surely a tiny little nuisance like you wouldn’t dare even raise a finger against me. And for what offense?”

Leroy, however, is appealing to Emma, trying to use his ill-gained knowledge of the crimes of this world, and Emma’s likelihood to punish them, to turn the whole scenario around. “Assault and battery, Sheriff, and disturbing the peace! There are people in this town who still like to try and enjoy themselves, even with things being as they are.”

Emma looks towards Regina, question clear on her face, but Regina can only offer an elegant shrug, releasing the dwarf with a twirl of her wrist. Leroy’s landing is both unexpected and less than graceful as he hits the floor in a crumpled heap. When he pops back up, his face is bright red and he is brandishing a fist angrily in Regina’s direction. It’s nothing she can’t handle, of course, but Emma steps between them nonetheless.

“I’ve been led to believe that this world is what you make of it. If you choose to let it slip through your fingers in a haze of drunken nights, that is not my issue to solve.”

“I come here to enjoy myself Emma, not to listen to that witch talk out of her ass. No one wants her here!”

“Well I think we’re going to have a problem then, Leroy, because she came in with me,” Emma says calmly, and Regina gives up all pretense of being bored and disinterested in the proceedings as Leroy is rendered speechless. “And to be honest I was having a perfectly fine time here before whatever it was that the two of you got into.” That last sentence has the feeling of a lecture and Regina immediately bristles, only mildly disgusted to see that Leroy does as well. 

“So we’re just supposed to accept that she’s being allowed to walk free for all the things she’s done?”

“Is that the basis of your entire complaint? That she disturbs the peace by existing because she cursed you once?”

“She just used magic to throw me into a wall, Swan!” Leroy yelled, obviously incensed, gesturing wildly at the wall behind him as if it was crucial that Emma know exactly which wall it was.

“Perhaps if you were a little better at keeping your fists to yourself, dwarf, I wouldn’t have felt the need to ensure that you were restrained well out of arms reach,” Regina offered icily. “I have my methods, just as Sheriff Swan has her handcuffs.”

“Fists to yourse—did he try to hit you?” Emma asks, voice part outraged and yet 100% incredulous. Regina sniffs, refusing to answer, maintaining her distance from the blonde and blessing the dim lighting in the bar as her cheek gives an answering throb. She doesn’t care to know if it looks quite as angry as it feels, now that she has managed to distance herself to even feel it. But Emma, bless her heart, won’t accept the non-answer and aggressively closes the gap between herself and the brunette, reaching for her jaw roughly to examine what must be a slowly forming bruise. Regina can’t control the wince at the rough treatment and the pressure from Emma’s fingers eases almost instantly as a flash of guilt crosses the Sheriff’s face. Her other hand reaches up to trail gently across the injured cheek in a caress that is almost too intimate for this time and this place, but she seems to remember herself and releases the Mayor, wordlessly asking if she’s alright. Regina nods briskly, and Emma takes a threatening, angry, step towards Leroy, who is suddenly wishing he hadn’t been quite so vocal with Emma earlier.

“I don’t suppose you’d care to recite those charges you came up with earlier back to me now, would you Leroy?” The tone is deceptively mild, Regina knows. “While you turn around with your hands behind your back.”

Later, when Leroy and the patrol car, David behind the wheel (leaving Mary Margaret alone with Henry which could have irritated Regina if she hadn’t been so grateful for the extended family at that precise moment), turn the corner and disappear from sight, Emma turns back to Regina, inspecting the bruise with her eyes.

“Are you okay?” she asks out loud this time, as if she needs to hear the answer.

“I can handle Leroy, dear,” Regina answers, but once again Emma won’t accept the non-answer and Regina can sense it before the Sheriff even needs to say something. “I am angry,” she offers. It feels so strange to keep saying that, and she really does feel at times as if it’s no one’s business if she’s angry or not.

“He’s a jerk, but it’s all talk,” Emma says, eyes quietly accepting as she looks at Regina, tracing over the bruise with cautious fingertips. “Most of the time,” she amends, clearly still upset herself.

“I hate that there are days I can’t go anywhere without running into some sort of stupid ‘hungry peasant problem’ related trouble.” Regina sounds resigned, but the scowl on her face tells Emma exactly what the former Queen thinks about the whole thing. “If magically tying them to a wall would stop each of them as effectively as it stops Leroy, there’d be five people in the whole town able to walk around,” she admits a heartbeat later. ‘And it makes me furious that there are so many of them. That it’s constant.”

“Well if anyone needs proof that you’ve changed you can send them to me. I’ll remind them that you could have done to them what you did to those hedges outside Town Hall the other week.” Regina snorts inelegantly at the thought and Emma laughs and for a second, everything is okay again.


	3. Don't Avoid Your Emotions

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Don't avoid your emotions. Don't discredit your feelings. Know that anger begins in feelings of doubt, fear, self-pity, discouragement, jealousy, and other negative thoughts.

Regina doesn’t have to guess who is at the door because Henry’s feet, pounding a staccato rhythm that sounds more like an excited elephant is loose in the halls of the Mayoral Mansion than like an excited 10 year old, pretty much announce it before the door can even be opened, or indeed before either Mills can make it down the stairs. Henry has the most absurd knack for knowing exactly when his other mother is at the door that Regina is tempted to try and see if the two are somehow in communication with each other or if perhaps Henry is developing some amount of psychic ability. When your mother is a product of True Love, and able to wield magic (occasionally) to boot, and your father is the son of Rumplestiltskin it seems almost crazy to think that Henry wouldn’t have some sort of magical ability, even before you’ve factored in the fact that the formative years of his life have been spent calling the Evil Queen, witch and sorceress in her own right, mother.

Following her son at a more sedate pace, the stiletto heels of her patent leather pumps clacking at a deliberate tempo, she is halfway down the stairs when she hears the front door hit the wall with a resounding bang that can’t quite be drowned out by Henry’s exuberant greeting to the blonde.

“Henry!” Regina calls sharply, mouth twisting in displeasure at the commotion. “I know you weren’t raised in a barn, young man, and I’m just as certain that I didn’t raise a young elephant.” And then, because she’s at the bottom of the stairs and Henry is looking at her with a sullen teenaged expression, and somehow Emma is standing there, a grown adult, looking just as sheepish, she adds a curt, “Sheriff,” as a greeting.

“Regina,” Emma says, just as coolly, which is impressive considering she still looks slightly guilty, and Regina turns back to Henry, almost dismissing the blonde.

“I should hope that I won’t have to repeat myself very much more on this, Henry. The household rules are the same as they always have been, and I need you to be more careful in the house. If you want to run about and throw things around, this is what the backyard is for,” she reminds him, with a sharpness lacing her lecturing tone that she normally manages to hide, however this truly has been a daily battle. For at least two years. And somehow, Regina absolutely runs out of patience when Emma is there picking him up for something, and what normally can be handled with the grace befitting a Queen somehow becomes much more of a trial. As if Henry’s behavior when around the blonde is twelve hundred times worse (and somewhere, Regina knows that this is not at all accurate).

It doesn’t help that Henry just favors her with an eye-roll before he is back to being thoroughly excited by the prospect of a weekend away with Emma. Not that they will truly be away, as they are staying in town, but Regina knows that Henry misses the time the two of them had spent, in New York and under a curse, as a happy family just the two of them just as surely as she knows that her relationship with Henry has not yet healed entirely. And As the main parent, that missing year aside, Regina will always be the bad parent, Evil Queen status notwithstanding. It’s truly enough to test anyone’s patience, and certainly would be testing hers daily (and even Regina is forced to admit to herself that she hardly has the patience of a saint) if she ever really thought about such matters. Because she didn’t. It wasn’t relevant.

“All packed, kid?” Emma is asking Henry, and it’s as if he was never scolded in the first place. Regina likes the sight of a smile on Henry’s face, but she knows that once more her words have gone completely ignored by the boy and that this time Emma is at fault. “Go get your bag and we’ll go,” she instructs when Henry nods in response. The response is instant, as if Henry (once more an excited elephant thundering all over the house) was shot out of a rocket, and Emma is too busy rubbing the back of her neck in clear embarrassment to manage to holler a halfhearted “Carefully, Henry!” before their son is out of earshot. Regina’s lip curls in derision.

“You alright Regina?” Emma asks, in the silence that follows, and Regina pierces her with a glare. “I just, you look a little upset, is all,” Emma is swift to explain hands out pacifyingly. When the Mayor doesn’t even deign to dignify that one with a full response she settles for rocking up and down on the balls of her feet, clearly aching to do something. On a normal day, when Emma is coming over and it’s a family day and no one leaves anyone else, Emma would already be inside but this is not one of those days and, unusually, Regina has no desire to invite the blonde in. Certainly not when Henry is on his way back downstairs and so clearly eager to leave.

“Got it!” he declares, and Regina reaches out to, unnecessarily, smooth his hair, holding back a sigh of disappointment as he worms away from her.

“You remembered to pack everything?” Regina asks him, tone heavy with something that she doesn’t care to identify, but the question just makes Henry’s brow crease in a small frown and she once more holds back a sigh.

“Yeah, I got it. Can we go?” He directs the last piece to Emma, who nods.

“I’ll have him home after dinner on Sunday, is that okay?” Emma asks as Henry brushes past her to head for the car. Regina frowns, but nods anyway, and the blonde is gone with nothing more than a small smile and a wave. Regina watches the car until it turns the corner, and then waits several more minutes before she closes the door. The house feels quiet and empty without an elephant in it…

When Henry returns, Regina is standing in the kitchen, leaning against the countertop, and mindlessly swirling around a half empty glass of cider. The glass still in her hand, she pushes off the counter as quickly as she can and clicks through the hallway at a measured pace, because a Queen never hurries and unless out of her mind with panic Regina isn’t sure she actually is able to truly hurry after years of her mother’s teachings.

“Hey Mom,” Henry says as he brushes past her the moment the door opens, heading up to his room without another word. Regina bristles instantly.

“Aren’t you going to say goodbye to Emma, Henry?” she asks pointedly before he’s made it up more than two stairs.

“Goodbye Emma,” he says simply, pausing on the stairs.

“Goodnight, kid,” Emma says warmly. “I had fun this weekend.”

“Me too,” Henry says with a brilliant smile and then he’s headed back up towards his room, leaving the adults alone. Regina eyes Emma for a moment before stepping back, feeling more generous than she had just a few days before.

“Would you like to come in?” she asks the Sheriff, and Emma smiles.

“Got any cider left?” she asks as she follows Regina through the hall to the study that she had sat in all those months ago, when the brunette was still a complete stranger. Regina shoots her a glance that is pretending to be annoyed but fails miserably, and gestures the blonde towards a seat while she refreshes her glass from a decanter on a small side table and pours Emma a new glass.

“Henry behaved this weekend?” Regina asks neutrally as she settles into a chair not too far from the other woman. At times like these she feels out of her depth, floundering through all kinds of strange social conventions made stranger still by her complicated relationship with the Savior. Conveniently, Emma seemed just as turned around by the whole dynamic as well, being all at once a lover, friend, co-parent, enemy, rival, Savior, and Sheriff to the woman who was no longer a Queen and no longer an Evil worth defeating. And sometimes Emma came inside the mansion, and other times she stayed on the stoop like an interloper; sometimes they sat together on the couch, curled up with a domestic intimacy, and other times they sat apart, like people who were barely more than strangers.

“He’s a good kid, Regina,” Emma responds, not quite answering directly. Regina nods with a slight smile, accepting the intended compliment with as much grace as she can muster. They fall into silence again, Regina sipping from her drink as Emma does the same, not quite watching Emma but aware of the green eyes on her.

“Yes, dear?” she prompts eventually, when the weight of the stare is too much to bear in silence.

“It really bothers you to have Henry away for the weekend, doesn’t it?” Emma asks, as if she had been waiting for Regina to ask.

“The house feels quiet without someone running around making a racket,” Regina responds dismissively, but Emma leans forward in a gesture Regina has come to learn means Emma has had an epiphany and isn’t going to let herself be distracted from the topic until she gets the response she wants.

“It’s not just that. There’s something else.”

“There’s nothing else, Emma,” Regina says, flaring up with a defensiveness that isn’t entirely warranted. Emma, never having been one to shy away from one of Regina’s outbursts, is unfazed.

“There is. Your mood swings are always entertaining to try and predict, _Your Majesty_ ,” Emma says pointedly, if not tactfully, “but it’s a whole different game before my weekends with Henry. You’re like a different person, Regina, so what gives? You have no problem with me being here,” she adds, gesturing to the room at large, “or anywhere else in this house, or spending time with Henry but it’s like the weekends are different from everything else.” Regina fights a blush and wills her eyes not to stray, as Emma’s had, to the ceiling above them where, Regina knows, the master bedroom is.

“You’re welcome here any time, dear, you know that,” she tries, fighting for a casual tone that she just doesn’t feel.

“Except for when I come to take Henry for the weekend and you won’t even let me in the house, Regina.”

The words fall like an anvil between them and the brunette feels at a loss for both breath and words as the impact makes itself known. Eventually, when she no longer feels so totally taken aback, she looks up at the blonde, meeting the challenge in her eyes with one of her own. “My son,” she begins, registering the flinch from Emma but moving past it without correcting herself even though she knows she should, “is always so excited to see you that I would hate to see your plans delayed even by a single moment. Unless you’d like to spend your weekends with him chatting with me over a tea party while Henry wears a hole in the floorboards?”

Emma cards her fingers through her hair with an exasperated sigh. “ _Our_ son,” she stresses but otherwise doesn’t rise to the bait, “likes it when we get along, and personally I like the time we spend together here, the three of us. Henry’s always excited,” she adds dismissively, “and he can wait a few moments longer while we enjoy our tea party, if that’s what you’d like to start serving on Friday afternoons.” She can’t help but let out a small snort at the absurdity of it all before she continues, once more catching Regina with a determined gaze. “And that’s all great talk, but that doesn’t explain to me why you’re always so damned pissy when I come to take the kid for the weekend. Something about me doing that, even though we agreed I should get the time with him, bothers you. What? I promise I always make him wear a seatbelt.” It’s more of a sardonic afterthought than a serious point, but Regina tries to latch onto it.

“As if that’s enough to keep him from harm in that death trap you call a car,” she gripes, but it sounds weak. The fact that Emma just cocks her head and doesn’t otherwise react to the jibe proves that it was weak. Pale fingers drum an impatient rhythm on the arm of the chair and Regina is forcibly reminded, as is often the case, of just how similar Henry is to the birth mother he didn’t meet until he was 10. “It’s stupid,” Regina admits finally, when she can’t take the drumming anymore and, rather than take Emma’s hand off, finally has to do something to silence it.

“It’s not stupid, Regina. Feelings aren’t stupid. They just are. And I can’t fix it if I don’t know what’s wrong.”

The blonde is endlessly patient and Regina wonders at the seeming ease with which this is accomplished. She can’t remember when she and Emma went from being constantly provoked by the mere thought of each other to tolerating jabs and jibes and smiling at the familiar bickering. When she and Emma even had something that was familiar, and just when Regina started to find it comforting.

“I have no need for saving, Savior,” Regina tells her firmly, astounded as Emma reaches out, putting her glass on the table next to her, to take one of Regina’s hands in both of her own.

“You matter to me, Regina,” she says earnestly, “and that means that I want to help wherever I can. And this bothers you. I bother you. And I don’t like it. I don’t want that to be how we are for the rest of our lives. We have this kid together, however strange that is, and I don’t want to do this dance anymore where you hate me for having given birth to him. So let me fix it. Tell me how to fix it.”

Inexplicably, Regina’s throat is tight with emotion. “I don’t hate you for giving birth to him,” she says quickly, needing that at least to be dispelled from the blonde’s mind. “Emma, I don’t.” Her glass is on the table now too, and her free hand is covering Emma’s, and the moment is terribly intimate and any words she was going to say have now entirely left her as she looks at the blonde, feeling mildly terrified at the whole prospect of the conversation.

“Good.” Emma’s tone is steady, but her face portrays the relief she feels. “But something is bothering you. I don’t want to push too hard, Regina,” and Regina thinks this is the stupidest thing ever, since one of the few (many) things Emma is good at is pushing too hard, but she also knows that she needs to be pushed, hard, sometimes in order to fix things. And she vaguely remembers Dr. Hopper saying something about admitting to one’s emotions, and thinks that maybe it’s not always enough to admit to being mad, but also to admit to why.

“Henry is always so eager to leave,” she murmurs, offering it up like it’s the answer to everything. One glance at Emma tells Regina that the Sheriff doesn’t understand. “To be with you. To be away from here. From me,” she elaborates in halting and broken sentences. “I raised him for 10 years and I’m not the mother he wants. I haven’t been for quite some time,” she adds with a slightly bitter tone twisting through her words. “And I suppose that in the end the Evil Queen, even the redeemed kind, will never be able to compete with the Savior, or the Charmings.”

And then Emma is kneeling before her, hands squeezing hers painfully tight, and the expression on her face so fierce that Regina wants to look away.

“Hey, no, you’re not a failure, okay?” she says reassuringly, and somehow Regina feels the pain in her chest ease ever so slightly. “I’m not his mom like you are, and I never will be, even if he wants to spend time with me, just the two of us. And if he’s excited, well I can’t say I’m sorry for that, but time with me isn’t the only thing that makes him happy, okay?” Regina nods, but her heart isn’t quite in it and Emma, who somehow always knows when Regina is lying, persists. “And maybe he misses New York, and how simple it was, every now and then. Misses a time when he only had one parent and when his father was just some unknown guy. I mean, even you have to admit that it’s probably preferable to the madness of our very tangled family tree and the reality that his father…” Emma trails off and Regina knows that the rest of that sentence isn’t something Emma is ready to say so casually just yet. “But it’s not what he wants, Regina, and you have to believe me. You have to believe that he and I, in New York with our perfect and happy memories, with Walsh, who was a great guy before all that monkey business, neither of us stopped, for one second, feeling like something was missing. Like there was a hole in our lives, in our home, and that nothing was as it should be.” Regina goes to scoff in disbelief, but Emma’s earnestness traps her and she can’t quite give voice to it. “Storybrooke is home. This mansion, and our twisted family tree where we’re kind of almost maybe related in a way I refuse to think about,” and the look on her face is so comical that Regina can’t help but smile, feeling less hopeless now than she had all weekend, “it’s home. And it’s not complete without you. Any of it.”

Regina frees one of her hands from the tangle of hands resting in her lap and reaches out to cup Emma’s cheek. “It wasn’t complete without you either. Without either of you. Without _both_ of you.” For simple, stumbled words, they seem really significant and Regina casts about for a way to put them back on familiar footing. “I’ll deny it later, but you’re not too bad at this ‘fixing things’ thing, Savior,” she husks, watching as Emma’s face lit up as she smiled, content to just gaze at the perfect sight for a moment, until Emma’s hand finds the nape of her neck and tugs the brunette into an impossibly tender kiss.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We are now officially over into SwanQueen territory! How silly of me to think that it wouldn't happen throughout this whole fic ;) Hey, I fly a Swen flag and I'm proud of it.. 
> 
> Despite Swanqueen status, this fic will be remaining Regina-centric. The romantic relationship is not the point here, so it may not be more than a passing thing for the remaining chapters. 
> 
> Thanks for reading :)


	4. Don't Take Everything Personally

Regina couldn’t remember the last time she had seen Emma this incensed. If she had to guess, the last time she had, the blonde had been taking a chainsaw to a prized apple tree. Over the course of Emma’s time in Storybrooke, Regina had become fairly familiar with the blonde barging into her office to discuss this thing or that thing and regardless of the issue it was nearly always the same scene. Regina had a secretary for a reason, but Emma never seemed to be stopped by that any more than she allowed herself to be stopped by anything else. (Distantly, Regina was aware that this was, in a sense, tit for tat since Regina herself had a habit for showing up unannounced as well) With a smirk that didn’t quite show on her face, Regina blithely continued her paperwork, placing the period at the end of her now-finished sentence with a flourish and putting the pen aside as she looked up at the Sheriff. 

“Miss Swan, what can I do for you today?” she drawled, leaning back in her chair and crossing her legs.

“These kids have gone too far!” The almost-yell seemed too loud in the large office and Regina found herself taken aback. Emma had rage in her, the former Queen knew that, but rarely was Emma so thoroughly swept up by the emotion. Righteous anger was a Charming family specialty, but righteous rage was a new thing entirely. Regina wasn’t even sure that James or Snow even knew how to push their emotions that far, but Emma, Emma who was in some ways more like Regina herself than she was like her parents (but different in all the right ways), could easily run the full range of the spectrum. It’s just that Regina had never quite seen that fact demonstrated.

“Which kids are you referring to, Sheriff?” 

“Those Lost Boys are a menace to society,” Emma declared grandly. Regina frowned, though she honestly couldn’t say she disagreed with the words.

“Those Lost Boys are adjusting,” she informed the blonde, remembering a very similar conversation from not that long ago, “to life here in Storybrooke. And I seem to remember that we all have upstanding citizens such as yourself, and Snow White, to thank for their contributions to this town.”

“Since when is anything Snow wants to do a good idea, Regina?” Emma responds with exasperation, carding her fingers through her tangled blonde hair while the other hand gestures wildly. “I can’t imagine how anyone could think that taking boys who had spent an eternal childhood running amok in the woods and bringing them to our world, expecting them to behave like normal members of society.”

“Yes, well far be it for me to say that the Charmings are the world’s best thinkers,” Regina said dryly, surprised when Emma brushed past the comment like she hadn’t even heard it.

“Something needs to be done.”

“Done about what, dear?” Regina asked, more than a little perplexed. In actuality, the Lost Boys had been fairly quiet since they had vandalized the Town Hall. 

“They… They… graffitiedhtebug.” The words were so quiet that even Regina’s keen hearing, and experience with the blonde’s mumbling, couldn’t make it out.

“Pardon?”

“They. Graffitied. The. Bug.” Regina fought the eye-roll at Emma’s careful, but grudging, annunciation of the sentence as she repeated it back. There were times, like this, where Regina was forcibly reminded of exactly who had given birth to Henry; luckily the blonde acted like a child frequently enough that the resemblance was often quite obvious. 

“I seem to remember being told that the town didn’t have security cameras, so unless something specific points you towards those kids, Sheriff, it seems like it’s just a harmless prank.” Perhaps she sounds a little flippant, but really this is an issue for the Sheriff, for Emma, to be handling, and really this shouldn’t be the type of issue that comes into her office at all.

“A harmless prank? Regina, this…” she stops, simply unable to continue, her whole face red with some emotion that Regina suspects isn’t just anger. Abruptly, she stands and crosses the room, leading the other woman to a couch across the room and pouring them both a small glass of cider from the decanter on a side table.

“Emma, it’s going to be fine,” Regina finds herself saying as she pushes the glass into the blonde’s hands. “I’m sure Marco can fix whatever damage was done.”

“It’s a personal attack, and they know it!” Emma insisted stoutly.

For someone like Regina, it’s easy to agree, to see that everything is personal. But after the Town Hall incident Regina had taken careful note of the incidences and had regrettably come to the conclusion that the Lost Boys, menace or not, were incredibly evenhanded with their pranks. No one person was singled out. No one prank was worse than another. It was all indiscriminate, and very much not personal. And if Regina had to hazard a guess, this was the first time the Sheriff herself had been pranked. 

“Emma, I know it feels personal, but I am certain it isn’t.” The words Regina knows Emma has to hear aren’t easy to say, and leave a strange taste in her mouth. “The damage can be fixed, and they’ll be off pranking someone else tomorrow.” Emma’s eyes turn to her with anger still in them, but it’s tempered with a small hint of defeat.

“Since when do you not think those boys deserve a little revenge?” Emma asks, quietly now that the fight is leaving her.

“Since I realized that not everything is personal.” Regina says with a heavy sigh. “Now drink your cider, dear, and go call Marco, before the mayor comes in here and you get in trouble for drinking while on duty.”

Emma’s smile isn’t brilliant, like it usually is, but it’s there, and that’s enough for Regina to count the conversation a victory.


	5. Challenge Irrational Beliefs

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Challenge irrational beliefs. When belief matches reality, anger becomes less of a problem.

"Emma, Killian just walked in. Why don't you go invite him to join us?"

The blonde stares blankly at Mary Margaret for a moment before exchanging a quick glance with Regina, who is seated to her left. The words have instantly put tension in the group where there was, miraculously, none before, and Regina finds herself sitting up straighter as if good posture can ward away the impending disaster. Of the table, only Charming is entirely unaware of what the simple question meant to the group, and even Henry is looking on with a bright curiosity. Both Regina and Emma have their backs to the door, so neither can see the pirate that has become the topic of conversation, but the brunette can trace his location with almost pinpoint accuracy given the rather alarming number of times Snow's glance has cut away from Emma to look back at Hook.

"Mary Margaret, don't." The exasperated tone to Emma's voice should clue her mother into the fact that the Sheriff is not amused, but Regina knows that Snow White is terrible at taking hints and even more so when the other woman is trying to play matchmaker.

"Don't what, Emma?" the school-teacher asks innocently. "I'm only suggesting you invite him over to eat with us."

"We barely see him any more," David chimes in helpfully, his attention finally grabbed by the conversation.

"Yes, for a reason." Across the table, Henry's eyes catch Regina's and give a tiny little roll. The Mayor wants to scold him, but, well, she also wants to roll her eyes too so she decides to just sit as quietly as possible and try not to draw attention to herself. 

"He's a nice man, Emma, and Henry seems to like spending time with him, your father and I approve of him, and we just would like to see him around more, is that too much to ask?"

"Yes, it kind of is. And dragging Henry into this is really low, Mary Margaret," the blond says, voice quiet but firm. Regina can tell, in a way that perhaps Snow hasn't learned how to yet, that Emma will only get more stubborn about this as time goes on, rather than softening to the idea, unless Snow changes her approach. Since this particular argument isn't one that Regina would like to see Snow win, she doesn't feel at all inclined to point this out to the other woman.

"The only person I'm trying to drag into this, Emma," Mary Margaret begins, clearly becoming exasperated by her daughter's reluctance to give in by even so much as a single inch, "is Hook. Is it so wrong to want to extend an invitation to the man to sit with us?"

Emma's hands have shaped themselves into something resembling claws, and Regina places a soothing hand on the blonde's knee under the table, gratified to see pale fingers grasp tightly onto cutlery and adopt a slightly less hostile-looking pose, though the tension is easy to see in her white-knuckled grip on the silverware. Regina can't help but feel that it's only a temporarily better pose for the blonde, as an itching between her shoulder blades makes it clear that the situation has far from resolved itself. 

"We're all friends here," David says soothingly, "and we've been on enough adventures with the guy. I'm sure your mother just thought it would be nice to share something as simple as a meal with him, for once."

"I'm pretty sure she had something else in mind, David," Emma grinds out, and Regina wonders if her magic is fast enough to stop any knives or forks that Emma might be throwing in the next instant.

"We just want to see you happy!" Mary Margaret cries out, loud enough to temporarily silence the diner. The brunette is looking as earnestly as possible at her daughter, while Emma looks like she's slowly and silently working herself up to a complete explosion, but she somehow manages to refrain from saying or doing anything more until the diner is once more filled with sound. In the general din, the scraping of Emma's chair legs against the floor is only audible to the people seated at the table.

"You want Hook to join us?" Emma asks, and Snow smiles, as if pleased to have won over her stubborn daughter. But Regina can tell by Emma's stance and forcibly neutral tone that Snow hasn't done anything of the kind, and a glance to Henry reveals that their son isn't any more convinced, if the slight furrow to his brow is any indication. 

"I think it would be nice, yes," Snow says primly, in response to Emma's question, and Emma's fists clench tightly for a moment around the silverware in her hand before releasing the pieces with a clatter to the table and stepping out from around her chair.

"I am happy," she informs the table, green eyes boring directly into her parent's oblivious faces. Gently, she runs a hand familiarly across Regina's shoulders as she passes, pausing only to deliver a quiet, "I'll see you later, okay?" to the former villain, and then she's across the room, giving Hook a rather subdued greeting in response to his jovial cry of "Swan!" that the table can hear across the room.

The rest of the brief conversation isn't as loud, but even Regina has turned to look at the pair and bits and pieces float above the noise of the diner from time to time. What little Regina can make out, through bad lip-reading and clues from the blonde's body language, doesn't do anything to ease her tension. The whole table watches as Emma gestures over at the table, claps Killian on the back, and then, bafflingly, walks to the door and steps out into the cold without another glance.

"Henry," Regina said, a touch desperately, as she turns back to the table, but her son is already standing with a scrape of his own chair. 

"I know," he says with an eye roll as he pulls on his coat. 

"Don't let her get too far," the brunette tells her son, instead of reprimanding him for his sass. She glances back towards Killian, who has flagged Ruby down to, she assumes, tell the waitress that he will be sitting with the Charmings for the rest of the meal. "I'll be right behind you both."

Henry nods and heads quickly for the door, following after his blonde mother, and Regina turns to pierce the Charmings with the type of glare that would have been more at home on her face back in the Enchanted Forest. She doesn't think that it's a bad thing, on the contrary, to admit that Storybrooke has softened her, but she does take pleasure in the fact that she hasn't lost all of her nerve and backbone. Dark eyes flash dangerously as she holds the pair in her sights for just a moment longer than is wise, considering that she wants to get everything she has to say out before the pirate arrives at the table. Ruby hasn't quite finished up at the table she was working on, however, so she still has time before she and Killian even speak about the table change.

"I've known that you're both morons for several decades," she hisses quietly, glaring daggers at the pair of them, "but this is quite a new level entirely."

"I don't," Snow begins, but Regina doesn't have time to listen to her even try to excuse herself.

"You do," she cuts in, glancing to Charming to ensure that he knows he's also included in this. "You do and you willfully ignore it. I know you think that I don't understand any of this, and I know that you'd like to pretend that there's nothing to understand, but your ignorance will not make this go away. I do understand. I understand better than anyone could ever hope," Regina informs them tersely, hating to have to own up to it, but feeling that it's the easiest way to get them to let her keep talking. "She's the Savior. She's Emma and she's your daughter and she's just so good, and I'm the Evil Queen who took her from you all those years ago. I'm the reason she didn't get all she deserved and more growing up, and I'm the reason this is the first chance you've gotten to meddle in her love life. But she's not a little girl and she's been making decisions on her own for too long for you to think you can do it for her now, or worse, ignore the ones she's made in favor of the ones you'd like to make for her. She deserves better than that. And maybe she deserves better than the Evil Queen, but the fact of the matter is that I love your daughter very much and I do my best each and every day to make sure that she is as happy as I can possibly make her. I can promise you that I can do, will do, and currently do much better for her than that oaf of a pirate you both seem so keen on inviting to dinner. And even if I didn't, you should respect Emma's choices enough to stop trying to force a man on her that she has no interest in dating." Another glance over her shoulder shows that Killian is wrapping up his conversation with Ruby and will be heading their way any second.

"Your daughter deserves better. I have long ago resigned myself to the fact that I will never have a relationship which either of you will truly respect, as it has been from the very beginning, so I don't expect you to stop acting like idiots and trying to force the pirate in where he isn't wanted for my sake, but I do expect you to remember that I am in a relationship with your daughter and that you idiots may not be able to respect my relationships, but you should respect hers before you end up with a lot more family dinners that end like this." She stresses the word family, even though she really tries to pretend as if they aren't some big happy family. Every now and then, the fact that she's managed to date herself into the Charming family gives her a serious case of heartburn, but this moment isn't the time for that. 

"Regina," Snow starts as Regina stands gracefully and reaches for her coat, but Regina ignores her. She's said what she needed to say, and she knows that an open conversation with Snow won't make the other woman understand it any more. Besides, she's run out of time for the discussion.

"Regina, love," Killian says, and Regina tries not to sneer quite so openly at him. "Leaving so soon?"

"I have several things to take care of before the night is through, Hook," she says smoothly, as if she needs to explain herself to him. However, she shoots a pointed glance past him to Snow, who has the grace to look slightly chastised.

"Yes, it seems like everyone is busy tonight," Hook says with a chuckle. Regina arches an eyebrow at him, not getting the reference, but he elaborates, "Emma said that she had a few things to finish up at the police station but that I was welcome to take her seat at the table. Said something about good company not going to waste..."

"Yes, well as heartened as I am to hear that Sheriff Swan is finally developing a work ethic, it seems like you will be short more of that 'good company' that was promised. I'm sure that Snow and David would be more than happy to try and pick up the slack, however," she says coyly, smirk playing around the corners of her mouth. "Now if you'll excuse me, Henry is waiting outside for me and I really must get going." The words are light and floating, buoyed by the false politician's tone and matching smile. "Enjoy your meal, I'm so sorry to have to run like this."

She is sure that she will end up having to actually talk to Snow at some point in the near future, if the other woman's childishly grumpy expression is anything to judge by, but all that matters to her at the moment is that Snow is left speechless with a drunken pirate sitting down in her vacated place and that her family is waiting for her outside. Well, hopefully, at any rate. She knows that Emma is anything but easy to handle when she gets upset, but she does also know that Henry is fast, resourceful, and absolutely ruthless when it comes to getting what he wants and talking people into things. She likes to think that he gets it from her, but only when such traits work in her favor.

True to form, Emma is sulking just at the end of the path to Granny's and Henry flashes her a triumphant smile as Regina steps through the doorway.

"Found her," he reports needlessly, though the gesture he makes in Emma's direction makes it clear that he thinks Regina is in for quite a battle.

"Thank you, Henry," Regina says, reaching out automatically to smooth his hair as she comes up beside him. She looks at the blonde woman, slumped bonelessly in one of the chairs outside of the diner. "The Sheriff's Station?" she inquires blandly.

"Best I could do at the time," Emma grunts, looking up to meet Regina's gaze with a defiant one of her own.

"Yes, well I think I might have a better idea," Regina says dismissively, reaching out to gently caress the blonde's cheek with a gentle smile. "How would you like a glass of the best apple cider you've ever tasted?"

"Mmm, sounds tempting," Emma says, temper dissipating quickly.

"I'll throw in a movie night as an extra form of enticement," Regina counters with a smile as the blonde gets to her feet.

"Sold. What's the movie?"

"I thought I'd let you and Henry choose," Regina says, motioning for Henry to go ahead of the pair as they start their walk through Storybrooke to the Mayoral Mansion. 

"You're pretty good at these better ideas," Emma informs her as they walk, watching Henry's back as the young man slowly starts to outpace his slightly slower mothers. 

"I'm pretty good at a lot of things," the former Queen informs her lover haughtily. Emma laughs and tangles their fingers together for a brief moment.

"I'm sorry for just leaving back there," Emma says after a moment of companionable silence. Regina looks over at the blonde, who is focused quite intently on the ground in front of her feet. 

"You have nothing to apologize for, dear," Regina says firmly. "I'm quite familiar with the overwhelming urge to poof myself out of a room. Although it was probably for the best that you did leave. I have no aversion to yelling at your mother while in front of an audience, but I wasn't exactly up for a scene tonight."

"So I have you to thank for having Henry come after me, instead of my mom?"

"Correct," Regina confirms with a slight nod. "Although your son was already moving before I'd even started to send him after you. I hope you hadn't been thinking of actually making it very far without us."

"I didn't want to ruin a family dinner," Emma says weakly, and this time it's Regina who reaches over to tangle their fingers together, firmly enough that they stay linked for several steps.

"It's not a family dinner without you, dear," she admits quietly, "and I think you'll find that I have very little desire to be anywhere where you are not."

A gentle tug on her fingers pulls Regina to a stop and she finds Emma's lips on her own before she's turned all the way around. Any question on her lips dies instantly as the blonde's lips meet hers in a brief but sweet kiss and she's still blinking away surprise when Emma's tug on her fingers gets her feet moving again in the direction of home.

"What was that for?" she asks the Sheriff with a soft smile.

"For being you," Emma responds instantly. "Also for not lighting my mother on fire."

Regina can't help but respond to that with a dark chuckle. "What makes you think I didn't?"

"It was awfully quiet in there, and there haven't been any sirens yet."

"Yes, well, a woman does like to leave herself some options for the future. One can't make the same exit all the time or it begins to get predictable," she scoffs, as if she would have seriously lit Snow on fire in the middle of the diner. In the middle of anywhere, really. Although the idea was tempting. "Although I suspect that the reward for my restraint is going to be an unpleasant conversation with her once she's managed to recover her senses." She tries to keep her tone light, but she thinks it's still pretty clear that she's not looking forward to the suffering that the idea promises.

"Yes, well lucky for all of us you're anything but predictable, Madame Mayor. And you never know, it's possible that there will be another reward you might not be expecting, and I bet it would be a much more pleasant reward than the one you've already thought of," Emma says, too innocently for Regina to take as anything other than a sordid promise. 

Emma's fingers squeeze tightly against the brunette's as Regina laughs brightly, amused despite her best efforts (as always) at how truly incorrigible the blonde can be. Henry glances back at them quizzically, and smiles, caught up in the moment, and Regina wastes only a second more wishing that the pair of idiots in the diner could allow themselves to see that this was just as good as anything else they could wish for their daughter.


	6. Learn to calm down when necessary

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Learn to calm down when necessary; engage in a hobby, or distracting exercise or activity.

It had been easier to ignore the Savior, to ignore Emma, back when she had just been the new Sheriff and Regina herself had been just the Mayor. Back when there were offices and stations and an actual place to storm off from, which is quite different from how things are now when the pair of them can just chase each other around the house endlessly. Emma doesn't exactly live with them in the Mayoral Mansion, but she doesn't exactly live anywhere else, either, and it's just as common to find the blonde making herself at home in Regina's carefully decorated home as it is to find the house empty. Regina is usually glad that the blonde has fit so comfortably into their lives, hers and Henry's, and is typically glad for their informal arrangement which allows her to keep the blonde close and which rarely allows her to realize that they are not, in fact, a family that has always been but are instead nothing but a trio of people tossed together due to a weird fluke of adoption and genetics in a town littered with messed up family trees. 

Moments like these, however, are not something that Regina is very fond of. She’s not a runner by nature, though Emma is, but after months of therapy and working and trying to be someone different she can acknowledge that sometimes trying to get a little distance and take a little space is better than trying to fry the problem where it stands. Of course, what this typically means in the pseudo Swan-Mills household that they now all reside in, is that when Regina tries to escape, Emma follows her, which is how they have managed to get themselves standing in the kitchen while Regina tries to cook something--anything—without lighting the kitchen on fire and, more importantly, without lighting her girlfriend on fire.

“I just don’t get why you keep trying to push me on this, Regina!” Emma almost yells, running a hand through already tousled blonde hair and utter shock at the woman’s cluelessness causes Regina to look up at a crucial second, nearly chopping her own finger off. The irony may be lost on the blonde, but the former Queen gets it loud and clear.

Reining in the snarky retort that is fighting to get loose, she instead offers up a forcibly neutral, “I just want to help you learn how to use it, Emma.”

“And I told you, I don’t want to learn how to use it! It’s just not something I want to do.”

“You’d rather carry around a gun and shoot at ogres, then?” Regina says caustically, scraping diced pieces of celery with a large chopping knife into the large pot sitting on the stove. It is perhaps a larger knife than she needs, but it’s the one she instinctively reached for when she stormed into the kitchen thirty minutes ago, and the weight felt comforting in her hand even if she was beginning to think that being in possession of a knife while mid-argument was perhaps a bad idea. Maybe if Emma could get the hint and back off, but Emma had never really been afraid of physical violence or even the magical kind. From the very beginning between the pair of them, their fights had been epic and now that they were dating they had barely changed, although they did tend to be destructive on a slightly more minor scale. After all, it wasn’t as if Emma was out taking a chainsaw to her apple tree anymore, but plenty of mirrors and glasses and anything else fragile had been the price of their arguments. Part of Regina wondered if perhaps this was just a sign that she and the Savior weren’t meant to be, but the other part just chalked it up to the pair of them being very passionate people who didn’t always see eye to eye. It really revealed nothing more about the state of their relationship, especially given the fact that they would fight just as passionately in support of the other as they would against her, if the topic was right. 

“I don’t see why I need to use my magic just because I have it. It hasn’t seemed to work out too poorly for all of the other freedom fighters in this town to have not used magic as a weapon. My parents seemed to have done just fine without it back when they were fighting you.”

It’s logical, perfectly so, but it still stings Regina like a slap to the face, and Emma is too caught up in the moment to notice. The knife, chopping carrots now, slips and Regina hisses with pain, physical seeming to mix with and mirror the emotional pain from the unpleasant reminder of her past. That, at last, catches Emma’s attention and Regina inspects the cut numbly as Emma comes around the large counter to grab for a paper towel.

“Jesus, Regina,” Emma mutters, reaching out to grab her hand and try and stem the bleeding, even though the cut is not especially deep and likely wouldn’t have even needed stitches were one of the member of this household not especially good with magic. “Dinner isn’t worth injuring yourself over,” the blonde chides, tone gentling as she inspects the cut and for a moment Regina basks in the change of pace as much as she enjoys the attention.

“I can handle this myself, Emma,” she says, weary of the argument that isn’t over yet. A moment later, the injured finger that Emma is staring at so intensely has healed before her eyes and only a bloody paper towel is left to show that anything had ever happened. “You know if you learned magic, you could have healed me. And I know that your parents did just fine against me back in the Enchanted Forest, but I also know that they needed to go to Rumplestiltskin for help more than once, and that your definition of “doing fine” appears to include the fact that they were forced to shove you into a wardrobe, alone, as part of some sort of hail mary pass. And yes, it worked, but it was not ideal, and neither is me having to bail them out of trouble because I’m the only one who can use magic in this family,” she gently frees her now-uninjured hand and runs her fingers over her hair, straightening strands that aren’t in disarray. She neglects mentioning that some of the issues she’s had to save them from seem to be caused by her anyway, and Emma doesn’t mention it in what little time Regina gives her to process.

“I know that you see magic as only something that can be used to destroy. I know that your family is not magical and that you want to fit in with them. You want to be a Savior for them, and magic doesn’t seem to fit into that. But your magic potential is tremendous, Emma, and it’s all so pure. Your parents gave you magic with their love; it’s as much a part of you as it is of them and your family. And I think that it’s a shame that you won’t learn to use it and learn to do beautiful things with it.” For a moment, a light show plays across an open palm and then Regina closes her fingers and the fairy lights disappear. Emma just stares at them as if she’s never seen magic before, and Regina muses that this, exactly, is the point she is trying to make. “There is so much that you could do that you’ve never seen. We share this house and we share a son and we share this gift. And I’ve used mine for terrible things in the past, but I’m not that woman anymore. I want to show you how good it can be to create instead of destroy, and I want to share in this with you.”

Emma doesn’t look like she’s quite managed to get a grasp on what Regina is trying to convey, not entirely, so Regina sighs and turns back to the chopping board and knife that she’d so suddenly abandoned. 

“I’m sorry if I’ve been a bit pushy on the subject, dear,” she says, not looking at Emma as she picks up the knife. “But maybe it’s best to table this discussion until a time where I’m not using a sharp knife.” Chopping resumes, mechanically, but Regina is painfully aware that Emma hasn’t moved yet.

“Okay,” Emma finally breathes, and Regina’s glance cuts in her direction before returning to the cutting board. 

“Okay what?” Regina asks sharply, because Emma still hasn’t moved. 

“Okay, teach me magic,” the blonde says simply. “I’ve been fighting and running my whole life and I don’t know how to create anything worth keeping around, except for maybe Henry, so I want you to show me how to use my magic like you said. The town is quiet, for the moment, so why not learn to indulge in the beautiful things all around us?”

Regina is certain that they’re still talking about magic, but it’s getting harder to be as sure as she is because Emma’s hand is grasping the knife, prying her fingers from it gently, and her body has suddenly pressed in close to Regina’s, one arm slipping around her waist so that a pale hand can splay possessively against the brunette’s stomach. 

“This feels too easy,” Regina husks out as pink lips find the junction of her neck and shoulder, and it’s a wonder that she can even form thoughts. 

“Everything is easy with you, Regina,” Emma murmurs against her skin. “Because with you I don’t have to be anything but myself.”

“I know the feeling,” the brunette says, turning around in Emma’s embrace, dinner long forgotten on the counter behind her. 

“So teach me to make love, not war,” Emma quips, eyes sparkling, and Regina thinks that maybe that’s the best idea they’ve had all day. 

“I think I can find a few things to teach you that will make your head spin,” she tells the blonde, and Emma laughs with delight. 

“Bring it on, Mills,” she says as their lips meet in a playful, teasing kiss.

Regina does exactly that.


End file.
